The Accountant Becomes Louis XVI to Save His Neck

The King's study was no room for lone reflection or bookkeeping anymore. It was no room where king and minister would rough out policies and make plans for home and foreign exploits in the coming year. It had been transformed into the buzzing, nervously pulsing nerve center of a great military operation. The rich hangings were covered with large, newly drawn maps of the Caribbean Sea, with its shipping lanes, its currents, and British naval dispositions; the great desk was covered with naval charts and architectural sketches of British fortresses in Jamaica; disk-revolving teams of secretaries sat at side tables composing dispatches and sorting reports; and the air itself seemed to smell different—no longer that of old books and beeswax, but that of sealing wax and ink and nervous perspiration of men drawing up war plans.

Louis, the unwilling king, became the unwilling commander-in-chief, and the burden hung like a physical weight. He spent eighteen hours a day in this room staring at every minute detail of the Jamaica Gambit. He had staked his future kingdom on this single giant roll of the dice, and he was going to leave nothing to chance.

He was applying his accountant's mind to the violent, chaotic task of military logistics, and his generals did not quite know what to make of him. They were men to whom kings spoke of glory, honor, and grand strategy. They were faced with a king who wanted to see his supply chain.

"Admiral de Grasse," Louis pointed to a long list of figures he had composed. "See we've provisioned one hundred twenty cannonballs per gun for the ships-of-the-line. What was our rationale behind this number?"

The admiral, a grizzled and exceedingly respected veteran of countless naval wars, blinked. "The same distribution, Your Majesty. It's been that way for fifty years."

"But the voyage is a more drawn-out process than a routine patrol," Louis countered, his tone not argumentative, but analytic. "And we're not counting on one fight, but a prolonged siege and the likelihood of more than one sea fight. Routine provisioning seems... insufficient. I want a reestimate under worst-case combat assumptions of prolonged, intense combat. We're not going to lose a fight due to insufficient ammunition."

The admiral looked at the Minister of War. They did not expect to be queried regarding such minute details.

Then his focus shifted to the Army. "General Rochambeau, your provisioning summary for the landing force. You note salted beef and hardtack. What rate of spoilage can we expect for such stores for a three-month journey in the tropics? But more importantly, what is our contingency plan for provisioning fresh water after we beach the army? Have we located any usable local sources? Have we allotted enough men to secure and to defend them? An army without water will be a defeated army."

His questions were constant, practical, and often went where the commanders' thoughts had not, sending them to junior quartermasters. Louis did not believe logistics were a sideline; they were the entire foundation upon which the success was built. He wasn't approaching the invasion as some grand crusade, but as the largest and highest-risk business venture of his life.

His greatest challenge, however, was not pride of the general sort, but the ubiquitous, brooding shadow of Jacques Necker. The Minister of War Finance was like a phantom of financial disaster hovering in the war room, his face a perpetual look of torment. To Necker, every cannonball was an expense, every uniform a debit in his accounts book. Each of Louis' choices was followed with a gentle, tortured consideration from his minister of finance.

"Your Majesty, fifty thousand livres more for new casks of fresh water?" Necker would moan, wringing his hands. "The coopers are paying us a premium for war! It's robbery!"

"It's a necessary expense, Minister," Louis would retort in reply, his patience running thin. "A leaking cask means dead men. It's a price I am willing to pay."

"But must we really provide first-grade gunpowder for the entire fleet?" Necker would argue. "The second-grade one costs twenty percent less! Could we not provide the little frigates with it?"

"A cheap gunpowder that fails to go off will be worse than no gunpowder at all," said Louis in a sour voice. "If a captain calls for a broadside, he will want to be able to count on every cannon going off. This isn't where we skim, Minister. We are staking the kingdom on this. We will not fail because of your desire to save a few thousand livres' worth of powder."

The constant tension between military needs and fiscal compulsions was a struggle he was obliged to wage day after day. He was obliged to deal with Necker's dread of bankruptcy even as he pushed back against the military's temptation to keep spending without end.

And, in addition to all that, he had to deal with the covert but persistent meddling of Vergennes. Even while officially supporting the King's great plan, the foreign minister found it impossible to resist the temptation of appropriating the great operation for his own political ambitions. He considered the expeditionary army patronage, to reward his patrons and purchase their loyalty.

"Your Majesty," Vergennes smoothly observed at one council gathering, "my nephew, the young Vicomte de Noailles, is a daring and spirited officer. He would be exceedingly flattered to serve General Rochambeau's second-in-command for the landing. Appointment to so high a rank would go far to bring his family to our side."

Louis looked at Vergennes with an expressionless face. He was perfectly aware that the Vicomte was a notorious fop, a man with no more than military expertise in the rumor-mill of the salons and in duelings over cards. To place him in a position of real power would be utterly irresponsible.

"Minister," he added coldly and firmly, "the outcome of this war, and maybe the kingdom with it, rests in the quality of its generals. We have chosen our commanders based upon experience and capacity. I will not risk the lives of a single Frenchman through the favor of relatives. Your nephew may serve, but he will serve in a rank commensurate with his current rank and experience, and no higher."

Vergennes' smile attracted in at the edges. There was no mystery to the public reprimand. Vergennes Relationship: -5% (Resentful). There was nothing said by the Old Guard for the moment, but they were in attendance, expecting his failure, ready to say 'I told you so.'

Finally, after weary, long preparation, came the great day. The fleet concentrated at Brest, a sea of sails and masts. Embarkation of the troops, filling of the holds, making the orders final and irrevocable. The Jamaica Gambit was in motion.

A courier rode into Versailles with the latest update from Admiral de Grasse, but one brief, to-the-point message: "Weighing anchor at high tide. For the King and for France."

Louis was in a high balcony of the palace, looking westward, but he could see nothing but the sinking sun. He pictured in his mind's eye his grand fleet, his fleet, taking in the breeze and sailing out into the wide, unforgiving Atlantic. There was nothing more that he could do. He had looked at every number, questioned every assumption, dominated every minister. But from this moment onwards, it was no more in his hands; the fate of it all now relied upon the winds, the tides, and the hearts of men thousands of miles distant.

He experienced the vast, overwhelming, and isolating weight of command descend upon him. He had just bet the future of France, his family's survival, and his modern mind's survival on one, bold throw of the dice. Never more a king did he feel, but he had never felt so powerless.